Nicole Kidman reveals how marrying Tom Cruise protected her from being sexually harassed

Nicole Kidman presents the award for best actor at the 22nd Annual Critics' Choice Awards in Santa Monica, California, U.S., December 11, 2016.Reuters

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's private lives have always made managed to make headlines. The Cold Mountains star recently spoke about how her marriage with Hollywood's A-list star, Tom Cruise, had protected her from being sexually abused in the industry.

In her earlier interview with New York magazine for its Women and Power series, Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman talked about how her then-husband Tom Cruise's power status in Hollywood helped her in many ways. During the interview, she explained that "I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from being sexually harassed. I would work, but I was still very much cocooned."

During Nicole Kidman's recent conversation with Today, she explained how being married to him shielded her.

"I was married at 23 years old, I wasn't going to parties or I wasn't going out a lot. I was pretty much at home. I had my first child at 25 and I was a married — I was in a family. So my sense of being in the world was — I was working, or I was at home," she said.

Nicole continued: "I think when you're married to a very powerful man, I mean, I'm not in a male's mind but... when I said 'protection,' I think there's almost like a barrier a lot of women don't have — that a lot of people in the world don't have.

Nicole Kidman first met Tom Cruise in November 1989 when they both starred in sports action drama film, Days of Thunder. On Christmas eve in 1990, the couple got married in Colorado and later adopted two children. However, things did not work out too well for them and after spending more than a decade together, their spokesperson announced the news of their separation.

On February 7, 2001, Tom Cruise filed for divorce, and the marriage was dissolved in August of the same year. Even after parting ways with Tom, Nicole always had good words for the Top Gun movie star. In 2006, she openly stated that she loved Cruise and "He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me and I loved him. I still love him."

After parting ways with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman tied the knot with Keith Urban in 2006.